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Kingdom Hearts 3 Dazzles at Premiere Event

No Release Date Yet, Unfortunately

Square Enix treated fans and members of the media (of which I am very much both, but I’m sure my invitation just got lost in the mail) to a taste of Kingdom Hearts 3 recently.

At a “Kingdom Hearts Premiere Invitation Event” in Santa Monica yesterday, attendees got to experience two levels from the long-awaited title. The first was Hercules’ Mount Olympus, which has appeared in the series numerous times before in the form of an arena where Sora, Donald, and Goofy can take on waves of heartless and various bosses. Kingdom Hearts 3 seems to reinvent the locale as more of a linear, plot-centric level now, and evokes memories of God of War 3 with a Disney spin, as players take on Lythos, the Rock Titan while ascending Mount Olympus. Sora sprints up the side of the mountain while dodging boulders before pummeling Lythos back into the underworld with various Disney theme park attractions, such as Big Magic Mountain, based on Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, Mad Tea Cups from the Mad Tea Party ride, and my personal favorite, an attack based on Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin (a vehicle-based-laser-shooter ride).

The second level on display was Toy Box, based on the childhood-defining Pixar film Toy Story. Players get to team up with Buzz and Woody to take on waves of heartless across Andy’s Room and Galaxy Toys, an enormous toy store that co-director Tai Yasue says is the product of collaborative discussions between the development team and Pixar, and a “mixture of all of our ideas and cultures.”

But we already knew most of that from past trailers and previews. What did we actually learn about Kingdom Hearts 3 from this premiere event?

Sora can officially wall-run horizontally and vertically.

Keyblades transform contextually to which world they’re from, each with limited time transformations, which in turn, each have their own attacks, attributes, and finishing moves.

Enhanced magical abilities return, such as the ability to slide on ice formed by casting Blizzard.

Sora can pilot different toys in Galaxy Toys to explore areas that are normally unreachable and take on challenging enemies.

Ralph from Wreck-It Ralph is a summon, which are now called “Link attacks.”

And lastly, director Tetsuya Nomura was on site to assure everyone that a release date will be revealed “early next month.”